Open Innovation in Assistive Technology

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Category Archives: Agenda for Meeting

So much seems to have happened during the two days of meetings that it is going to be hard to put it into one blog so I am going to divide it up by topics with reflection on the discussions as I go. The delay in putting up the minutes has been due travelling to the USA in between and learning more about open innovation whilst at a disability conference.

This was incredibly helpful as it enabled us to discuss the various elements that needed to be in place in order to engage a community and provide sufficient information for a project to gain traction as well as possibly find a way to be sustainable.

This was followed by examples of how far three of us got along the route of openness using three different case studies.

Peter went through the whole process and was able to show the elements of the Openness Rating that would be important to a new comer to the site. It also enabled us to discuss the important areas that required more guidance as to what someone putting up a project might need. This was later illustrated when Garry Paxton (on the Advisory Group) began the process with ‘Picboard’ and sent us an e-mail with queries such as ‘needing more feedback’ and ‘where to go to next’? The Incubator has a number of full and basic requirements that still need to be added.

EA – Atbar goes East – SME wishing to take it forward. Here the idea was that a company may take over the toolbar and wish to make money from it – which licence would be best? Once again the questions became more complex and it was clear we needed to add some items to the community and governance documentation to clarify items.

Steve – MAAVIS – expert developer explained how he had taken the project through the process and how the community was now developing as can be seen from the MAAVIS website.

Steve explained how

●The Openness Rating is a metric

●Guides mentoring – not primary a self-service tool

●Used repeatedly (cf OSS Watch support plan)

●Measures current status

●Allow gaps to be identified and addressed

Questions for the next section…

●What else do we need to do with REALISE and ATBar to make a good fit with the Community Explorer and Licence Evaluator?

●How do we use the Openness Rating to guide mentoring and complete the first cycle with present projects?

It is perhaps not surprising that when workshops occur between technology developers, professional AT folk and users that some of the same themes appear when discussing open source assistive technology softeware. This seems to have been the case during the two recent AT conferences as the main topics seemed to be around licencing, IP, funding and maintenance leading to the success or not of certain types of business models.

Ross will supply governance models for agreement by the team. Still to be actioned RG

Possible clarification needed from Ross and Rowan about ‘AT business model and licence differentiation tool’ Need to think about inviting Advisory Group, business community and JISC TechDis to interactive workshop on the subject – clarify time and days – I day workshop – 6 days work and one free.

Steve to supply ‘AT governance and community differentiation tool’ and may have a workshop with developers, professionals, JISC TechDis, carers and users. Steve to provide estimate of days needed to complete this task. Action: SL

The work above should be linked to the REALISE project as well as client projects

RAATE Workshop –Accepted – need to work on paper and workshop Action All

Need to make a section for research – look at what other countries are doing – Peter has link to Harvard research on the subject, ? Australia. Still to be Actioned ALL

Clear definition of what we mean by open innovation compared to the JISC BCE Open innovation (OI) Action PC if poss.

Need to engage with companies such as Sirius to see how we can help them and vice versa. _ Steve knows Mark Taylor CEO Action SL – discussed and care needed as to the specifics of this link up re: AT use in schools on a Linux platform.

Agenda Items

Southampton to confirm contractual agreements

David Woolley has sent an agreement for Sheffield. Peter said that several universities have a standardised collaboration agreement and this includes Sheffield and Southampton and Barnsley Hospital have agreed (inc. D4D)

Possibly make this a virtual meeting and ask the Advisory Group to the workshops planned by Ross and Steve. Possibly 15/16th and following weeks in Sept set up on Doodle.comAction: EAD

Project Web Site – logo design

Logo drawn -EA thanked Joe from LSL for help – it was accepted – Steve provided Website requirements analysis for phase 1. This did not include full functional specification but made reference to ATIB database and other features.

Evaluation methods for the site and logging etc.

Discussed the various services tested and agreed to continue with Linkedin API development – future criteria based on present analysis. Discussed evaluation of various open source evaluation tools for logging, usage and user satisfaction with site. Steve felt we may have been a bit hard on the Drupal system. (Comment added see evaluation) EAD to take forward.

Website initial requirements – fields for idea generation – Title, Summary (limited character count 100), Longer Description (free field), minimal category of AT (need to be able to choose multiple categories) – allow for a category to be added by user. Always ability to hide or remove their own ideas. – More ideas to be sent to team. Need to be able to search other websites for open source ATs. Action: Provide sample framework – Soton team for further discussion.